In the most recent indication of what employers can expect from the National Labor Relations Board under President Trump’s second term, the acting General Counsel for the Board, William Cowen, recently rescinded a series of memoranda issued by his predecessor, Jennifer Abruzzo, that employers regarded as overprotective of employee rights under the National Labor Relations Act. While the memos carried no legal weight, they were a guiding force for Regional Offices and an indication of how the Board may rule on significant issues, such as expanding remedies available to prevailing unions and cracking down on non-competition and severance agreements.
The acting General Counsel’s move away from those priorities is likely not the last time that Trump’s NLRB reverses course from the Biden Board. Rather, employers can expect that the next few years will see a reversal of Biden Board decisions that watered down management rights, made it harder to enforce workplace rules, and made it more difficult to decertify unions that no longer enjoyed employee support, among other employee-friendly decisions. (Sophisticated readers know that a pendulum shift is common for the Board after the presidency changes political parties.)
Those decisions, however, will have to wait until President Trump appoints and the Senate confirms new Board members. After President Trump dismissed sitting Board member Gwynne Wilcox (appointed by President Biden), the Board currently has only two sitting members and is thus without a quorum, prohibiting it from deciding new cases. While the NLRB announced on February 1 that Field Offices will “continue their normal operations of processing unfair labor practice cases and representation cases,” those operations will no longer focus on the employee-friendly priorities advanced by former General Counsel Abruzzo.
